orchestrator

I was helping a colleague of mind this evening with a question about retrieving a vCenter Resource Pool given a vCloud Director Organization vDC using vCenter Orchestrator. However, this particular workflow does not exists out of the box with vCO, but with a little help from the vCloud API, we can easily create our own workflow to accomplish this request. We will be leveraging the Query Service introduced in vCloud Director 1.5 and the "orgVdcResourcePoolRelation" query type which provides a mapping between an Org vDC to vCenter Resource Pool.

You can download the vCO workflow that I created called Get Org vDC to Resource Pool Mapping and import it into your vCO environment. You will need to make sure you have the vCloud Director vCO plugin installed.

Here is a example of running the workflow which accepts a vCloud Director Org vDC:

Here is the results of the workflow:

You will notice that it produces the MoRef (Managed Object Reference) to a vCenter Resource Pool instead of the actual Resource Pool object. The reason for this is the query only returns the href of the Org vDC, href of vCenter Server and the MoRef of the Resource Pool. Using the MoRef, you can connect to your vSphere environment and retrieve the Resource Pool, but I will leave that as an exercise for my colleague 🙂

Note: If you go through the query types, you may have noticed the resourcePool query type, the reason this will not work is that it only provides a list of root Resource Pools (basically vSphere Clusters) and it does not return the sub-resource pools that are created for Organization vDCs.

A week ago, I ran a simple contest to give a way a free copy of Automating vSphere with vCenter Orchestrator Book. To enter the contest, you just had leave a comment with 5 things you wish or hope to automate using vCenter Orchestrator. I am happy to announce the winner of Cody Bunch's new book is Chris Greer! Congratulations Chris!

Chris's comment was the following:

1). I would like to put a web ui in front of the request process for a vm.2). I want to call out to other services like request tracker via their rest interface3). I want to automate vcloud director with automated task like license tracking4). I want to automate network appliances like load balancers and firewalls when deploying specific templates (like web servers)5). I want to be able to kick off vco workflows via a soap/rest call to extend current scriptsBonus: I'd love to configure SRM but I don't think it's integrated yet.

Chris, hopefully the new Automating vSphere with vCenter Orchestrator book will help you accomplish these tasks!

Thank you to those who enter and if you did not win, you should still go and grab a copy of Cody's book (available in Kindle and paper back format) and learn how easy it is to leverage vCO in your vSphere environment.

I still consider myself a beginner in vCO, but I have found that it has been very easy to create some really cool workflows such as this, this and this and you do not even need to be a developer to start using vCO! I am looking forward to reading Cody's new book.

Both Pearson and Cody Bunch was kind enough to provide me with an additional paper back copy of Automating vSphere with vCenter Orchestrator. Since sharing is caring, I will be giving away this copy to one lucky reader of virtuallyGhetto!

How do you win?

Just leave a comment below with the top 5 things you would like/hope to automate using vCO in your vSphere infrastructure. I will randomly select a winner a week from today. Even if you do not win, you should definitely still grab a copy of Cody's book and learn how easy it is to leverage vCO in your vSphere environment.

I was able to quickly put together a vCO workflow using the Query Service in the vCD plugin and with the help of this VMTN thread from Christophe Decanni. I have exported my workflow so you can easily import it into your vCO Server without any hassle.

Disclaimer: Please thoroughly test this in a non-critical environment before using it on production systems.

To start using the workflow, you will need to ensure you have the vCloud Director 1.5 vCO plugin installed and import the workflow after you have downloaded it to your local system:

Here is a quick view of what the Storage vMotion for vCloud Director workflow looks like:

Here is an example execution of the workflow where we will Storage vMotion (using vCloud "relocate" API operation) to move "vESXi-01" VM from "iSCSI-3" to "iSCSI-4" datastore.

Step 1 - Select vCloud vDC and vCloud VM that you wish to performed the Storage vMotion. As part of the initial query, user will be provided with the current datastore the vCloud VM is residing on:

Step 2 - Once the query has completed to identify the current datastore the vCloud VM is residing on, a user interaction request will be needed to select the destination datastore to perform the migration to. You will notice the workflow icon will change to a yellow color and requiring an "answer" from the user. Right click on the workflow and click on "Answer" to continue the workflow:

Step 3 - You will see a "result" field which is the query of the vCloud VM that was selected and the datastore it's currently residing on. You will now have the option to select the vCloud datastore you wish to Storage vMotion the vCloud VM to:

Step 4 - Now you are ready to kick off the Storage vMotion operation. This may take sometime to finish depending on the size of the VM and the speed of your underlying storage. You should see a message under "Log" specifying the operation has been started. If everything is successful, you should see the vCloud VM now running on the new datastore.

Now you can enjoy performing Storage vMotions in vCoud Director with just a click of a button with the help of vCenter Orchestrator! Happy workflowing 🙂

Continuing from our previous post Leveraging vCD + vCO + Wavemaker Part 1, I am now going to show you how to integrate the vCenter Orchestrator workflow we created earlier into Wavemaker to present a simple web application to an end user. If you can not wait to go through all the steps, jump to the bottom for the video of the final product.

You will need to download Wavemaker 6.4.3 RC versus the 6.3.3 GA because there is a specific UI feature that I have utilized to provide a better user experience. You will need to register for a free account to download the development builds and I have been told 6.4.3 should GA pretty soon.

Once you have downloaded Wavemaker, you will need to install it on your system and you maybe asked to perform an additional library download, just follow the instructions and you ready to create your first Wavemaker application. After the installation, go ahead and start the Wavemaker application and it will automatically launch a web browser which will be your workspace. You will need to use either Firefox or Internet Explorer, as it does not work with Chrome.

In case you get lost below or would like to just get this working right away, I have exported my project and it can be downloaded it here. You can simply import the .zip file and make the necessary changes to the project to fit your environment.

Start off by creating a new project and give your project a name and just use the default theme and then click ok.

Next, at the top screen click on "Services" and then "Web Service" since vCO is exposed as a webService API which we will import into Wavemaker.

We need to specify the URL of your vCO server, it should be in the following format:

and then provide a name for your service, in the example, I named it "vCOReference".

Once the vCO service has been imported, click on "Canvas" and then "Palette". We will now add widgets for our web application. Add the following in this order: Picture (if you wish), Text, Button and Grid. It should look something like the following:

Most of these should be pretty self explanatory widgets. The Grid (dataGrid) is used to display your data result.

If you decide you would like to add a logo/banner, click on the "Source" tab at the top and then click on "Resources". Here you will be able to add any additional resources to your project such as a images.

Once you have uploaded your image, select the picture widgets in your canvas and click on "source" icon to the right side of the screen. Here you can now bind to the image you just uploaded and click "Bind", there is also a green icon on the upper right hand corner to show you whether or not the binding is the proper type.

You should see the image being displayed in the picture widget.

Now click on the Text widget in your canvas and go ahead and provide a name for the variable and also a caption which is located on the right side of the screen. In the example, I named both fields "username", you can provide a different name but be sure to keep track of the variable name as it is used later on.

If you recall earlier, I mentioned I am using a specific UI widget that requires Wavemaker 6.4.3 RC, which is the LoadingDialog widget and allows us to display a busy dialog for various events. This is just one of the many features in 6.4.3 release. Go ahead and add this to the canvas and it is under "Dialogs". We will also configure the "widgetToCover" and specify "dojoGrid1" which is just the name of our dataGrid.

Next we will need to add several variables that will call the vCO services and store our results. To add these new variables, you will click on the "Insert" option at the very top. It is also helpful to be in the "Services" tab next to "Model" to see the variables that have been created in your navigation pane.

The first variable that we will add is called "varResult", this will be a regular variable that will be used to store our results. Make sure the following properties on the right side of the screen are set:

name = varResult

type = StringData

isList = checked

The second variable to be created will be a "Service Variable" and will named "getResult" which will retrieve the results from vCO using the getWorkflowTokenResult API method. Make sure the following properties on the right side of the screen are set:

The third variable will be a "Timer" variable which is located under "Advanced" and will be named "resultTimer". This is needed as the results are not available immediately after executing the workflow and we set a 3sec timer to then retrieve our results.

Make sure the following properties on the right side of the screen are set:

name = resultTimer

delay = 3000 (in MS, you may need to tweak this based on your env)

repeating = unchecked

We will also need to specify the action to trigger when the timer fires, this is defined under "Events" for the resultTimer variable. Set the onTimerFire to "getResult" Service Variable that we defined earlier. When the timer goes off, it will retrieve the results of our workflow

The fourth and final variable that we will need to add is also a "Service Variable" which will execute the workflow by calling the executeWorkflow API in vCO. We will name it "runWF". Make sure the following properties on the right side of the screen are set:

name = runWF

service = vCOReference

operation = executeWorkflow

Now we need to bind our parameters which will be used to provide input to the various variables and/or vCO API methods.

The first one will be the "getResult" variable and you will need to expand down to "parameters" on the right side of the screen. Here you should see three parameters which will need to be populated: password, username and workflowTokenId.

Click on "username" and then a new window will pop-up. Select "Expression" and then select "username" and provide the username that will be used to connect to vCO and ensure there are double quotes around the string and click Apply when finished.

Click on "password" and do the same exact thing and provide the password that will be used to connect to vCO and click Apply when finished.

Click on "workflowId" and instead of selecting "Expression", select "Simple" and drill down into the "runWF" Service Variable and select "id". As part of the executeWorkflow return object, a WorkflowTokenType is returned and the "id" property is what is needed for us to retrieve the results of the workflow. Click "Bind" to finish the parameter binding for this service variable.

Note: There is a green box on the upper right hand of the screen which validates the property binding type, this can be helpful when binding parameters.

After you have finished binding those three parameters, you should now see the following:

Lastly for this service variable, we will also need to create an event trigger. Select "onResult" and click on "Javascript" which will allow us to insert some javascript logic upon the result of the data.

You will now be taken to the "Source" tab and a new javascript function will automatically be created for you called "getResultResult" assuming you have followed the naming standards in the example. You will need to add the following lines of javascript to the function:

The script clears any previous output on the dataGrid and then retrieves the data which is returned as a single string and replaces all the characters we do not want. It then splits using the ";" as the delimiter and adds each entry to our dataGrid.

Once you have pasted the javascript, go ahead and click back on the "Cavnas" tab. In addition to the first even trigger, we will also set "onSuccess" to loadingDialog1.hide which will hide the busy dialog after the results are available to be displayed on the dataGrid.

Now we need to configure the event triggers for "runWF" service variable. The first is "onBeforeUpdate" and we will set that to loadingDialog1.show which will display the busy dialog while the workflow is being executing. The second will be "onResult" and that will be configured to call the "resultTimer" timer variable and retrieve our results after the workflow has been executed.

Next we will need to configure the "submit" button event and we will again create a custom javascript which will call our "runWF" service variable.

Note: This technically could have been easier to bind to the parameters of the "runWF" service variable, but I found a bug that prevented this from working. A work around was provided by Michael Kantor, a Wavemaker developer and the bug has been reported and hopefully will be fixed before the GA version of 6.4.3 is released.

You will need to add the following lines of javascript to the function:

Here you will need to substitute the username/password to your vCO server and the workflowId which can be obtained by following this blog post. The workflowInputs requires the name of the workflow input variable name and assuming you followed the previous article, you can keep the same name and "this.username.getDataValue()" will extract the string from the username text widget you added. If you changed the name of the variable, you will need to update this accordingly.

Okay, we are almost there. The last widget we need to add an event trigger to is the dataGrid and for "onClick" we will also create a new javascript.

You will need to add the following lines of javascript to the function:

This single line of javascript will open a new window when a user clicks on one of the dataGrid cells.

Now lastly, we just need to bind our dataGrid to our "varResult" variable that contains the results. Select the dataGrid widget and click on "dataSet" and bind to "varResult" and ensure you see a green icon on the upper right hand side of the window.

You can also name the column header, by default it is called "DataValue" and you can change it to "orgUrls" if you like. To do so, right click on the dataGrid and select "editColumns".

We are all done now! We just need to compile the application by click on the "Run" icon at the very top. After the application compiles, it will open a new window to your new Wavemaker application.

So there you have it, creating your own custom web portal application using Wavemaker, vCenter Orchestrator and vCloud Director vCO Plugin! As you can see the possibilities are endless and with a little javascript knowledge, you can create any type of portal that goes beyond just VMware products!

I would like to give a big thanks to Christian Johannsen, Michael Kantor and especially Craig Conover in assisting me with creating my first Wavemaker application. These guys are truly rock stars with vCO and/or Wavemaker! For more information about Wavmeker, definitely check out documentation/examples and the Wavemaker community forums.

In addition, there are some other great examples of utilizing Wavemaker written by my colleagues:

Recently while working on my blog post Leveraging vCD + vCO + Wavemaker Part 1, I needed to find the workflowId for the workflow I created in vCenter Orchestrator. The workflowId as one would expect is just a unique identifier for vCO to keep track of all the workflows in the system. When using the vCO Java Client, the workflowId is not something users need to worry about as the workflow names are presented through the client. Though if you are using the vCO API, such as calling the executeWorkflow method, then you will need to know the ID of the given workflow.

There are several ways you can locate the workflowId, here are three different methods:

Method 1:

After creating/editing a workflow, the vCO Java Client creates .vmware directory with some files locally in your home directory. (e.g. in Windows it would be under %userprofile%)

There is a file called "[username]-edited-list.xml" which contains a list of the most recently edited workflows.

When you open the file, you will noticed the very last entry is the workflow that you just created/edited and it displays only the workflowId but not the name. Assuming you are not using a shared account or logging in with same username, this is quick/dirty way of retrieving the workflowId but no easy way to confirm that it is in fact the workflow you are inquiring about.

Method 2:

In the vCO Configuration page, you can enable "DEBUG" logging which will also capture all workflow execution as part of the verbose output including both the name of the workflow that was executed and it's ID within the logs. Once you have captured the workflowId, you can easily revert "DEBUG" mode to "INFO" mode and does not require a restart of the vCO service.

Method 3:

Lastly, you can actually create a workflow in vCO to find the workflowId for a given workflow. Just create a new workflow and give it a name and configure it to take an input string for the name of the workflow and output string for the workflowId.

Here is the vCO script that queries for all workflow's and queries for the specific workflow in question:

Here is what you will see as the output when running the getWorkflowId workflow:

UPDATE:

Method 4 (Thanks to Jorg Lew) :You can actually retrieve the workflow ID by just selecting the workflow in the vCO Java Client and pressing CTRL+C (keyboard copy shortcut) and then pasting that into text editor. This will actually display the XML-representation of the workflow.

There are multiple ways to retrieve the workflowId in vCO, but method #4 is definitely what I would recommend as it is the easiest method within the vCO Java Client.

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William Lam is a Staff Solutions Architect working in the VMware Cloud on AWS team within the Cloud Platform Business Unit (CPBU) at VMware. He focuses on Automation, Integration and Operation of the VMware Software Defined Datacenter (SDDC).